Memory mimic aids reading

By
Kimberly Patch,
Technology Research NewsThe
ease of any given task has a lot to do with how the brain carries it out.

Cognitive scientists have known for decades that human memory can
be modeled using semantic networks -- sets of words like "cat" or "dog"
whose connections depend on the strength of the associations between them.
When the brain retrieves one piece of information it activates the retrieval
of related pieces of information. This process of spreading activation enables
us to easily retrieve related concepts.

Researchers from the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) have devised
software that leverages the way the brain models words to help speed the
process of reading or skimming through digitized text. The software highlights
portions of text in a way that makes it cognitively easier for the user
to find what she is looking for.

The method could be used to make browsing Web search results, reading
travel guides, and learning from textbooks easier, said Ed Chi, a research
scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center.

The software, dubbed ScentHighlights, expands on a set of topics
of interest supplied by a user to create a list of keywords tailored to
the user's interests. "Users indicate their topics of interest by some method
-- user profile, search keywords, clicking on words or index entries," said
Chi. The system then adds related topics, he said. "The system uses all
of the related concepts to create a list of important keywords that might
be interesting to the user."

These keywords can be thought of as the pieces of semantic information
that are likely to be activated in the user's memory, said Chi. The researchers'
prototype highlights sentences that contain keywords in yellow, then highlights
the user' search terms in pastel colors and related keywords in gray.

In one example, a reader is skimming through a biohazard book and
has entered anthrax symptoms as a topic of interest. On one page several
sentences contain the yellow highlight. Each instance of "anthrax" is highlighted
light green, each instance of "symptoms" is highlighted light blue, and
related keywords "nasal stuffiness", "twinges", "joints", and "fatigue"
are highlighted gray.

The researchers' study showed that users performed a variety of
information-finding tasks faster using the system than looking through a
paper book. The next step is to perform eye tracking studies to understand
how the software changes the user's eye movements while reading, said Chi.
"We expect users to more quickly target relevant passages using ScentHighlights,"
he said.

ScentHighlights can be combined with a previously-developed indexing
tool dubbed ScentIndex, which allows a user to query the index of an electronic
book to get a page of index entries that are conceptually related to the
query. When the user places the arrow over one of these entries, the highlighted
paragraphs on that page appear in a text box.

The ultimate aim of the software is to reduce the cognitive stress
of skimming for interesting content, said Chi. "It's very stressful to answer
basic questions such as 'is this info available in the source document I'm
reading?', 'which part of the document should I pay attention to?', 'what
other related concepts are in this document that I should know about?',"
he said. "I hope to show that this approach can alleviate these stresses."

The researchers' work falls under a new class of human-computer
interface research that aims to first understand user behavior in terms
of a scientific theory, and then, using that theory, find ways to improve
user interfaces, according to Chi. "These types of research use back-end
computation to model users [and use] the results to enhance user interaction,"
he said. "There is a strong theoretical validity to why it should work."

The software is ready for use in practical applications now, said
Chi.

Chi's research colleagues were Lichan Hong, Michelle Gumbrecht and
Stuart Card. They presented the work at the Intelligent User Interfaces
Conference (IUI 2005) held in San Diego, January 9 to 12, 2005. The research
was funded by Advanced Research Development Agency (ARDA) and the Palo Alto
Research Center.

Timeline: Now Funding: Corporate; Government TRN Categories: Human-Computer Interaction; Data Representation
and Simulation Story Type: News like to a new Related Elements: Technical paper, "ScentHighlights:
Highlighting Conceptually-Related Sentences during Reading," presented at
the the Intelligent User Interfaces Conference (IUI 2005), San Diego, January
9-12, 2005